Beyond the First Amendment: The Politics of Free Speech and Pluralism (2005)

The central goal of my book was to open space for debates over the meaning and practice of freedom of speech outside the context of legal claims. The dominant framework that structures American debates over freedom of speech is a legal one constructed by legal academics and Supreme Court justices within the institutional context of the First Amendment. In spite of the centrality of freedom of speech to liberalism, liberal theorists have essentially ceded this ground to academic lawyers allowing the terms of debate over freedom of speech to be set by those primarily concerned with First Amendment claims. For instance, the structure of the First Amendment framework requires that those who make a free speech claim must make that claim against state action. Claims against private interference in one’s freedom to speak do not fit within the structure of legal claims and are therefore excluded from consideration as free speech questions. I develop an alternative, pluralist framework that is meant to promote political debate about freedom of speech that can encompass not only the institutional concerns of First Amendment scholars but also the concerns of political theorists, social movements and individuals working to establish free speech claims that currently go unrecognized.